XP freezes ramdomly

eg My girlfriend logged on to check her email and just after the modem connected and it started to recieve the PC froze totally.....and tonight I left it on downloading a couple of files, returned to find it had again frozen, no mouse movement nothing. That was the only thing running apart frm MSN messenger, Zone alarm and matrox power desk.

Has anyone XPerianced anything similar? I thought this OS was supposed to be really stabile!

OR at least recover its self and give some sort of error??

and also it did not register the crash at all when I rebooted...the other windows family used to? is this meant to?

And I have rarely had this problem before installing XP, maybe it froze once a month or so but not twice a day!

Would installing the VIA drivers help? I read somewhere that they are built into XP and theres no real need to install them.

Sounds like it's happening mostly while you are online. I'd download and install the latest modem drivers (get them from the oem web site, not Windows Update). While you're at it, you might as well do the same for all your hardware (it's a good idea).

See above, its a Fujitsu DSL modem, connected VIA USB, I downloaded the drivers from Fujitsu just before I installed WinXP, these are the new ones as they now support XP...hence the install!!! All worked fine under Win2k!

XP has proven to be real finicky with certain usb devices. Make sure you have all the Updates from windows installed, swap usb ports, basically... tinker with the usb stuff and see if you can solve it there (I'd go as far as VIA 4in1's and a bios update if it's available). Also, look in your event logs for any errors that may be reported.